To "just4fun26": Welcome to the squirrel-cage, and look out for the nuts. You'll find that this forum is populated by professionals and amateurs, by people who use nothing but shortening in their "buttercream," and people for whom such a recipe would violate the very definition of the word, "buttercream," by people who are intentionally disagreeable, and by people who simply have an odd sense of humor. (I fit into the latter of each pair of categories).

 

To "MimiFix" and "reginaherrin": Perhaps I should have said "technically stolen": Paramount has always been extremely indulgent about such things (and fan art, fan fiction, and the fanzines that publish it), where Star Trek is concerned. Unlike, say, the Union Pacific Railroad's legal department which, some years ago, tried to extort the entire model railroading industry and hobby for trademark infringement over time-honored practices that have always done railroads far more good than harm. And also unlike Disney's legal department.

 

Sort of like some inconsequential falsehood in answer to an arguably irrelevant question in court: technically perjury, but if the question was irrelevant in the first place, hardly actionable as such, unless there's a witch-hunt involved (and the judge is complicit in it).

Hi Regina,

 

My name is Joni Fried and I am the owner of Freed's Bakery in Las Vegas.  I want to thank you for contacting us about the cake photos.  I am actually visiting Oregon and just decided to go through this site and came across your post.  I assume you contacted the bakery yesterday about the cake photos?  I have spent all kinds of money with my intellectual property attorney over the years.  We have had one bakery in Nigeria which was hosted out of Utah who stole all of our photos.  We have had other cake decorators in Las Vegas use our cake photos and still leave the chocolate disc with our name on them.  We even had a bridal magazine post a few photos of ours in an advertisement for a wedding venue.  It was the venue who actually gave the photos to the magazine.  We contacted the magazine and they had to take the pages out of all the remaining magazines which hadn't been distributed yet.  We had been the exclusive cake designer for their venue.  They still had dummy cakes that we let them use in their office.  Our attorney made it possible for us to go pick up the model cakes from the venue.  They were actually photographers who bought the venue and know the law about intellectual property.  We never even got an "I'm sorry"!!   

 

There is a huge difference between cutting and pasting someone's photos into your website and another thing taking watermarks off of photos and then posting them.    The thing that comes back to sting the people who do this is that they can "try" to copy the cake but buyer beware.  Like you and others said in this post... the website  shows a beautiful cake and the cake the people actually get can be a nightmare.  There is one bakery in Las Vegas who's website had all photos from Ron Ben Israel.  I called his cake studio to let him know but I would doubt that he actually got the message. 

 

I could go on for hours on this subject but I have decided that the world is a very small place and it would be a daunting job to police our cakes.  I don't know if you noticed or not but for the past 2 years we haven't watermarked our cakes.  This is something that my nephew talked me into.  He said it distracts from the picture of the cake.  We owe people like you and others a great big "thank you" for trying to contact us regarding this.  I would love to hear from you in an email.  If you would please send me an email on my personal email I would appreciate it.  I would love to see the website.  My email is [email protected].

 

I look forward to hearing from you,

 

Joni Fried President

Freed's Bakery Las Vegas

Hi Regina,

 

My name is Joni Fried and I am the owner of Freed's Bakery in Las Vegas.  I want to thank you for contacting us about the cake photos.  I am actually visiting Oregon and just decided to go through this site and came across your post.  I assume you contacted the bakery yesterday about the cake photos?  I have spent all kinds of money with my intellectual property attorney over the years.  We have had one bakery in Nigeria which was hosted out of Utah who stole all of our photos.  We have had other cake decorators in Las Vegas use our cake photos and still leave the chocolate disc with our name on them.  We even had a bridal magazine post a few photos of ours in an advertisement for a wedding venue.  It was the venue who actually gave the photos to the magazine.  We contacted the magazine and they had to take the pages out of all the remaining magazines which hadn't been distributed yet.  We had been the exclusive cake designer for their venue.  They still had dummy cakes that we let them use in their office.  Our attorney made it possible for us to go pick up the model cakes from the venue.  They were actually photographers who bought the venue and know the law about intellectual property.  We never even got an "I'm sorry"!!   

 

There is a huge difference between cutting and pasting someone's photos into your website and another thing taking watermarks off of photos and then posting them.    The thing that comes back to sting the people who do this is that they can "try" to copy the cake but buyer beware.  Like you and others said in this post... the website  shows a beautiful cake and the cake the people actually get can be a nightmare.  There is one bakery in Las Vegas who's website had all photos from Ron Ben Israel.  I called his cake studio to let him know but I would doubt that he actually got the message. 

 

I could go on for hours on this subject but I have decided that the world is a very small place and it would be a daunting job to police our cakes.  I don't know if you noticed or not but for the past 2 years we haven't watermarked our cakes.  This is something that my nephew talked me into.  He said it distracts from the picture of the cake.  We owe people like you and others a great big "thank you" for trying to contact us regarding this.  I would love to hear from you in an email.  If you would please send me an email on my personal email I would appreciate it.  I would love to see the website.  My email is [email protected].

 

I look forward to hearing from you,

 

Joni Fried President

Freed's Bakery Las Vegas

A

Oh the Lego cake is another picture in her CC album

I've had my share of troubles with this, but I still can't bring myself to watermark the photos either. I've watermarked the bottom like Pink Box Cakes does, but they just chop it off and use the picture anyway.  When I remember I embed a copyright into the digital info, but that can be removed also if a person wants to. I had someone in Venezuela use nothing but my photos to advertise cakes. I also always save a couple of photos of the cake form different angles, which helps prove I had the cake in my possession. Some who steals a photos will only have the pics you post online.

 

Anyway, I just wanted to chime in to remind people to take screen shots. That way you can show what the person did. For any who don't know how: Hit the PrintScreen button (PrtSc), usually on the top row, left side of your keyboard. Then paste into a document in any program like Photoshop. (Ctrl v or right click paste).

 

I read somewhere that a bakery in another country actually put one of those skins on their delivery truck with huge pics of Anne Heaps cakes.

AYes, Venezuela, somewhere like that, big ole PCB cakes on the side of the van.

I'm sure you already know how to adjust opacity of your watermark, but if anyone else has a hesitation to watermark because it obscures your image, you can fix that.

Upload your cake and your watermark to ribbet.com. You can layer your watermark over your photo, and you can adjust the transparency. It can be barely visible, or it can be big and bold. You don't have to sacrifice any of your detail this way.

A

Thanks. Now I get it. The balls some people have. No ignorance on her part, especially after she commented on someone else's photos. Who is getting bit in the butt now? :-D

When I first started I made this mistake. But I put the pictures on my FB page with the disclaimer that these were not my pictures with the exception of 2...which I still never claimed they were. But anyhow as soon as it was pointed out to me that it was wrong I took them down. I certainly never used them as my avatar or posted them in my portfolio or commented on others doing it and saying it would "bite them in the butt"......nor was I a baker with years of experience (I still am not) So I am not commenting. Just pointed out the pictures and others can draw their own conclusions.

Thanks to everyone from this thread and especially to those individuals that have been emailing us in regards to these stolen photos.  I hope we responded to everyone, but if not I want to extend my sincere appreciation!

 

It's because of this strong cake community that we are able to identify and weed out these few "rotten" apples. 

 

Ron was also kind enough to notify us about this particular incident and he expressed very similar sentiments.  While there will likely always be "cake thieves", we can rest assured that the good people will always outnumber the bad and we shouldn't let the small few spoil the fun of everyone else!

 

Thanks

 

Anne Heap

This does happen a lot online, the net is growing and nobody is really controlling this sort of staff. With legal boarders on different languages site you never be able to put a charge for copywriting